


Follow Along Child

by theskywasblue



Category: Lost Souls - Poppy Z Brite
Genre: M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghost leads Steve into the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow Along Child

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Changeling

Ghost is singing, soft and a little breathless. It’s the only sound that Steve has to follow through the trees. Night is sliding in around them like a predator, warm and heavy. Steve thinks he can hear it breathing, or maybe that’s just his own breath in his ears.

“Ghost?” His arm slides against a tree trunk, damp and mossy; the night smells of wet earth and thousands of plants exhaling warm oxygen sweetened with chlorophyll.

“Come on,” Ghost calls back, it’s not much farther.”

In the distance his hair looks like St. Elmo’s fire. Steve looks back and realizes he cannot see the road anymore, or the glint of the T-bird through the trees. He would be totally lost if he tried to turn back, maybe just as lost going forward, but at least Ghost is forward, which means he won’t be alone, and there is nothing worse than sitting alone in the dark at the side of the road.

Ghost is still singing, and Steve isn’t even sure the words are in English anymore, either that or he just isn’t hearing them right. The humidity and darkness make everything sticky and unreal, like moving through spider webbing. He has that same almost-crawling sensation on his skin and his T-shirt is matted with sweat all across his chest. It’s hard moving through the trees, trying to find gaps and spaces where his shoulders fit, places where his shoes can fall and he won’t be pulled under or tripped up.

Then all at once the trees seem to fall back, the night takes a breath, and Steve is in a tiny clearing – all fallen leaves and soft earth. Ghost is at the center, waiting, and all around him a ring of mushrooms - almost luminescent in the darkness - poke up out of the ground.

“It’s a fairy ring.”

“This is why we came all the way out here?” Steve wipes the sweat from his eyes, licks his lips. He’s thirsty as hell, longing of the beer they left in the back seat of the T-bird, even though it’s probably piss-warm by now. “A bunch of magic mushrooms?”

Ghost gives him a look – half exasperated, half amused, “You don’t want to eat these.”

“I only like my mushrooms on burgers since we tripped on those nasty ones.” He remembers the fever of that trip, the shadows pushing in from the bedroom walls, the dark whispers. And Ghost of course, tangled around him, holding him in place and not letting him drown in the mattress. He has never asked Ghost what he saw that night, or why he never seemed afraid.

Steve steps carefully over the ring of fungus. There’s barely enough room for them both inside and he bumps against Ghost, who steadies them both with hands on Steve’s hips. He smells like sweat and wine and old leaves, of cobwebbed dreams and the T-bird’s upholstery. Steve can see the lines of his eyelashes and the little dark swirls in the coloured parts of his eyes and it makes him feel warm and shaky, a little like he’s tripping again, and he wants Ghost to wrap around him and never let go. He thinks he’s heard a story about fairy rings once, a long time ago, maybe from Miz Deliverance, who knew all about that sort of thing – something about secret dreams and a creature called a changeling; about fairies leading unwary children away. He never really did understand. He gives up trying to remember and smiles at Ghost instead.

“Is this where you steal my soul?”

Ghost just laughs, “Why would I need to do that?”

-End-


End file.
